24/10/2008

From the Feuilletons

From the Feuilletons is a weekly overview of what's been happening in the German-language cultural pages and appears every Friday at 3 pm. CET.. Here a key to the German newspapers.

The Milan Kundera caseSalon18.10.2008

In an article (available in English) published in the Slovakian internet magazine Salon, Czech writerIvan Klima discusses the allegations (in English) against Milan Kundera: "Those who have been convinced by the authenticity of the police document have been asking questions. Are we responsible for our own actions? What is the responsibility of an artist and do his actions, even if they were committed in his youth, influence society or at least his readers? Can one separate one's moral stance from one's work? Will a writer's later work not be discredited by such actions? It is not possible to answer any of these questions without ambiguity."

Neue Zürcher Zeitung 20.10.2008

Journalist Sonja Margolinalooks at the treatment of informants in Eastern Europe who, today, are in the media spotlight much more than official secret police agents. And she also recounts her own experience with the KGB in 1984, when they tried convince her to report on the activities of her friends and colleagues. "A second grim week passed before my official summons arrived, and a week after that I made my way into the reception room of the Lubyanka KGB headquarters. I have only vague memories of the content of the interrogation, but the feeling of existential abandonment which came over me in that bare room, is something I won't forget. What preyed on me most after the event, was that I could not stay calm during the questioning. For a half-way experienced blackmailer like my custodian, it was child's play to crack my 'secrets'. In those three hours, which lasted an eternity, I had to learn that the border to betrayal does not start with torture, but with much simpler things in life, such as the threat of annulling my right to live in Moscow."

Der Freitag 23.10.2008

Hungarian writerGyörgy Dalos is deeply suspicious about the interests of the "investigative journalists and historians" in the Milan Kundera case. He quotes Vaclav Havel's advice to Kundera (published in Respekt in Czech and in English at Salon.eu.sk) in which he wrote: "Milan: try to stay above things! As you know, worse things can happen in the course of one's life than being defamed by the media." But should the denunciation charges turn out to be true, Dalos believes it is "extremely important" not to lump together "all the intellectualperpetrator-victims who have been outed since 1990", but to "examine each case individually." Because, he says, "we are dealing with a generation that is dying out and which, after all the hard lessons under years of Communist rule, has tried to free itself from the curse of its own history. The saddest thing about many of these protagonists, is that they were constantly wanting to make amends for their human and moral failures, without being able to admit them. Obviously it was easier for them to behave honestly than to speak candidly."

Le Point 24.10.2008

In a way, Milan Kundera is the first French author to be involved in a secret-police debate. In Le Point, Bernard-Henri Levy joins a list of French authors who have commented on the case, in expressing his doubts about the authenticity of the incriminating document. And although in France not one person has spoken out against Kundera, Levy reprimands the media for the spectacle it has created, and issues a impassioned plea in Kundera's defence: "My thoughts are with Milan Kundera. I am thinking about this literary war which has been choreographed with the precision of a ballet, where the first blow leaves the enduring mark and a newspaper, which has the audacity to call itself Respekt, takes it upon itself to destroy you, and all you can do is sit out the beating, bend over double and live out the rest of your days with an infamous shadow which is not your own."

Perlentaucher 24.10.2008

Milan Kundera should speak out says Anja Seeliger. "If Kundera has been falsely accused, then he has the right to defend himself. He had the chance to do so before the publication of the article in Respekt, because the magazine sent him a fax about its findings well in advance. But before he talks about 'the assassination of an author' and demands an apology from Respekt (more here in English), he and rest of the world should spare a thought for Iva Militka and Miroslav Dvoracek. They deserve the truth."

Other stories

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 20.10.2008

Anselm Kiefer has just been awarded the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. For Julia Voss, the painter and his whispering admirers are trapped in a fairytale forest. "You would never reproach a child for imagining Nazism as an evil kingdom ruled by dark powers. But when grown men stand before us and once again portray Nazism in these terms, when they declaim the expression 'the fall of man' as naturally as they would a love poem, when on a gorgeous sunny day they suddenly have to talk about the 'pointlessness of our existence', when they turn politics into a fairytale, then you really start to get scared."

Die Tageszeitung 21.10.2008

Björn Gottstein sends an enthusiastic report from the Donaueschinger Music Festival, where three top ensembles competed against each other in interpreting newly composed pieces: "The Ensemble Intercontemporain began with their version of Aureliano Cattaneo's 'Sabbio' (sand): a soft, velvety flow with seamless transitions, all dark sparkles and heady flashes. Then came Klangforum and everything became more robust. Their interpretation was like an analysis: motifs were set free, transitions became cuts, and drifts revealed grains. French elegance with an Austrian bite. Cue: Ensemble Modern with a performance of Arnulf Hermann's "Fictitious Dances". But the musicians don't really leave the spot and stomp about more than dance."

Frankfurter Rundschau 23.10.2008

Last weekend 19 European historians launched an appeal warning against an EU proposal which seeks to impose penal sanctions on genocide deial and thereby construct state truths. Arno Widmann echoes their concerns: "It is not up to the state to determine what is true and what is false. ... Holocaust denial is being punished as if the point was to defend the fact of the Holocaust. But by making the discussion of the facts a punishable offence, you turn an Ã¢â¬â always discussable Ã¢â¬â fact into an article of faith, which cannot be questioned. A fact is a fact because all attempts to deny it fail and not because you stand to spend five years in jail for doing denying it." (Read an article on the subject by Timothy Garton Ash in the Guardian)

Saturday 11 - 17 December, 2010

A clutch of German newspapers launch an appeal against the criminalisation of Wikileaks. Vera Lengsfeld remembers GDR dissident Jürgen Fuchs and how he met death in his cell. All the papers were bowled over Xavier Beauvois' film "Of Gods and Men." The FR enjoys a joke but not a picnic at a staging of Stravinsky's "Rake's Progress" in Berlin. Gustav Seibt provides a lurid description of Napoleonic soap in the SZ. German-Turkish Dogan Akhanli author explains what it feels like to be Josef K. read more

Saturday 4 - Friday 10 December

Colombian writer Hector Abad defends Nobel Prize laureate Mario Vargas Llosa against European Latin-America romantics. Wikileaks dissident Daniel Domscheit-Berg criticises the new publication policy of his former employer. The Sprengel Museum has put on a show of child nudes by die Brücke artists. The SZ takes a walk through the Internet woods with FAZ prophet of doom Frank Schirrmacher. The FAZ is troubled by Christian Thielemann's unstable tempo in the Beethoven cycle. And the FR meets China Free Press publisher, Bao Pu.read more

Saturday 27 November - Friday 3 December

Danish author Frederik Stjernfelt explains how the Left got its culturist ideas. Slavenka Draculic writes about censoring Angelina Jolie who wanted to make a film in Bosnia. Daniel Cohn-Bendit talksÃÂ ÃÂ about his friendship, falling out and reconciliation with Jean-Luc Godard. Wikileaks has caused an embarrassed silence in the Arab world, where not even al-Jazeera reported on the what the sheiks really think. Alan Posener calls for the Hannah Arendt Institute in Dresden to be shut down.read more

Saturday 20 - Friday 26 November, 2010

The theatre event of the week came in a twin pack: Roland Schimmelpfennig's new play, a post-colonial "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" opened at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin and the Thalia in Hamburg. The anarchist pamphlet "The Coming Insurrection" has at last been translated into German and has ignited the revolutionary sympathies of at least two leading German broadsheets, the FAZ and the SZ. But the taz, Germany's left-wing daily, says the pamphlet is strongly right-wing. What's left and right anyway? came the reply.read more

Saturday 13 - Friday 19 November, 2010

Dieter Schlesak levels grave accusations against his former friend and colleague, Oskar Pastior, who spied on him for the Securitate. Banat-Swabian author and vice chairman of the Oskar Pastior Foundation, Ernest Wichner, turns on Schlesak for spreading malicious rumours. Die Zeit portrays the Berlin rapper Harris, and the moment he knew he was German. Dutch author Cees Nooteboom meditates on the near lust for physical torture in the paintings of Francisco de Zurburan. An exhibition in Mannheim displays the dream house photography of Julius Schulman.read more

Saturday 6 - Friday 12 November, 2010

The NZZ asks why banks invest in art. The FAZ gawps at the unnatural stack of stomach muscles in Michelangelo's drawings. The taz witnesses a giant step for the "Yugo palaver". Bernard-Henri Levy describes Sakineh Ashtiani's impending execution as a test for Iran and the west.Journalist Michael Anti talks about the healthy relationship between the net and the Chinese media. Literary academic Helmut Lethen describes how Ernst Jünger stripped the worker of all organic substances.read more

Saturday 30 October - Friday 5 November, 2010

Now that German TV has just beatifiedPope Pius XII, Rolf Hochmuth tells die Welt where he got the idea for his play "The Deputy". The FR celebrates Elfriede Jelinek's "brilliantly malicious" farce about the collapse of the Cologne City Archive. "Carlos" director Olivier Assayas makes it clear that the revolutionary subject is a figment of the imagination. The SZ returns from the Shanghai Expo with a cloying after-taste of sweet 'n' sour. And historian Wang Hui tells the NZZ that China's intellectuals have plenty of freedom to pose critical questions.read more

Saturday 23 - Friday 29 October, 2010

Author Doron Rabinovici protests against the concessions of moderate Austrian politicians to the FPÖ: recently in Vienna, children were sent back to Kosovo at gunpoint. Ian McEwan wonders why major German novelists didn't mention the Wall. The NZZ looks through the Priz Goncourt shortlist and finds plenty of writers with more bite than Houellebecq. The FAZ outs two of Germany's leading journalists who fiercely guarded the German Foreign Ministry's Nazi past. Jens-Martin Eriksen and Frederik Stjernfelt analyse the symptoms of culturalism, left and right. Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht demonstratively yawns at German debate.read more

Saturday 16 - Friday 22 October, 2010

A new book chronicles the revolt of revolting "third persons" at Suhrkamp publishers in the wild days of 1968. Necla Kelek is appalled by the speech of the very Christian Christian Wulff, the German president, in Turkey. The taz met a new faction of hardcore Palestinians who are fighting for separate sex hairdressing in Gaza. Sinologist Andreas Schlieker reports on the new Chinese willingness to restructure the heart. And the Cologne band Erdmöbel celebrate the famous halo around the frying pan.read more

Saturday 9 - Friday 15 October, 2010

The FR laps up the muscular male bodies and bellies at the Michelangelo exhibition in the Viennese Albertina. The same paper is outraged by the cowardice of the Berlin exhibition "Hitler and the Germans". Mario Vargas-Llosa remembers a bad line from Sweden. Theologist Friedrich Wilhelm Graf makes it very clear that Western values are not Judaeo-Christian values. The Achse des Guten is annoyed by the attempts of the mainstream media to dismiss Mario Vargas-Llosa. The NZZ celebrates the tireless self-demolition of Polish writer and satirist Slawomir Mrozek.read more

Saturday 2 - Friday 8 October, 2010

Nigerian writer Niyi Osundare explains why his country has become uninhabitable. German Book Prize winner Melinda Nadj Abonji says Switzerland only pretends to be liberal. German author Monika Maron is not surethat Islam really does belong to Germany. Russian writer Oleg Yuriev explains the disastrous effects of postmodernism on the Petersburg Hermitage. Argentinian author Martin Caparros describes how the Kirchners have co-opted the country's revolutionary history. And publisher Damian Tabarovsky explains why 2001 was such an explosively creative year for Argentina.read more

Saturday 25 September - Friday 1 October

Three East German theatre directors talk about the trauma of reunification. In the FAZ, Thilo Sarrazin denies accusations that his book propagates eugenics: "I am interested in the interplay of nature and nurture." Polemics are being drowned out by blaring lullabies, author Thea Dorn despairs. Author Iris Radisch is dismayed by the state of the German novel - too much idle chatter, not enough literary clout. Der Spiegel posts its interview with the German WikiLeaks spokesman, Daniel Schmitt. And Vaclav Havel's appeal to award the Nobel prize to Liu Xiabobo has the Chinese authorities pulling out their hair.read more

Saturday 18 - Friday 24 September, 2010

Herta Müller's response to the news that poet Oskar Pastior was a Securitate informant was one of overwhelming grief: "When he returned home from the gulag he was everybody's game." Theatre director Luk Perceval talks about the veiled depression in his theatre. Cartoonist Molly Norris has disappeared after receiving death threats for her "Everybody Draw Mohammed" campaign. The Berliner Zeitung approves of the mellowing in Pierre Boulez' music. And Chinese writer Liao Yiwu, allowed to leave China for the first time, explains why schnapps is his most important writing tool.read more

Saturday 10 - Friday 17 September, 2010

The poet Oskar Pastior was a Securitate informant, the historian Stefan Sienerth has discovered. Biologist Veronika Lipphardt dismisses Thilo Sarrazin'sincendiary intelligence theories as a load of codswallop. A number of prominent Muslim intellectuals in Germany have written an open letter to President Christian Wulff, calling for him to "make a stand for a democratic culture based on mutual respect." And a Shell study has revealed that Germany's youth aspire to be just like their parents.read more

Saturday 4 - Friday 10 September, 2010

Thilo Sarrazin has buckled under the stress of the past two weeks and resigned from the board of the Central Bank. His book, "Germany is abolishing itself", however, continues to keep Germany locked in a debate about education and immigration and intelligence. Also this week, Mohammed cartoonist Kurt Westergaard has been awarded the M100 prize for defending freedom of opinion. Chancellor Angela Merkel gave a speech at the award ceremony: "The secret of freedom is courage". The FAZ interviewed Westergaard, who expressed his disappointment that the only people who had shown him no support were those of his own class. read more